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International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.

The Syrian people’s revolution is approaching the end of its third year, still confronting the apparatus of death and destruction of the ruling dictatorial regime, in addition to numerous threats and dangers. The popular masses have made huge sacrifices in this period: in addition to over a hundred thousand number of killed, hundreds of thousands are wounded or missing, and around half the population of Syria have become internally displaced persons or refugees in neighbouring countries.

By March 2015, the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) will be passed by both houses of the Philippine Congress and signed into law by the President of Republic. This will be the legal basis for the establishment of the new Bangsamoro Political Entity and it will also effectively repeal Republic Act 9054 which legally created the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The current Aquino administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) consider ARMM as failed political experiment.

Recently posted Debate

The Left Party is fighting for “a society in which no child has to grow up poor, in which all men and women can live a self-determined life in peace, dignity, and social security and can democratically shape social relations.” In order to achieve this, it demands “a different economic and social system: democratic socialism.” That is how the Left Party formulated its programmatic approach in its new Erfurt Party Programme of 2011.

The time I saw Charb in Paris was January 24, 2010, the day of the crowded commemoration of the French philosopher and activist Daniel Bensaïd at La Mutualité. During the speeches, Charb kept drawing and projecting vignettes about his comrade Daniel, whose book, Marx: Mode d’Emploi, he had illustrated a year earlier. In the deep sadness that filled the big room his vignettes constantly reminded us of Bensaïd’s subtle humor, of his little malicious smile with which he used to charm us all, slowly helping us to heal the loss. Director of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Charb was one of the ten cartoonists and journalists killed, together with two policemen, in the ferocious attack of January 7, 2015.

Neither do we condone the bombings and murder of journalists at their headquarters, however much we are repulsed by their racist, chauvinist and hateful Islamophobic caricatures of oppressed people. Neither do we condone the subsequent murders at the Paris Kosher supermarket.

The Jan. 7 Paris bombings and shootings afforded French and allied capitalist heads of state—some 50 presidents and prime ministers plus top U.S. officials, all complicit with mass murder—the opportunity for an unprecedented show of unity under the call of “I am Charlie Hebdo.” We note the hypocrisy of the perpetrators of war and systematic violence coming together to pose as defenders of “free speech, liberty, fraternity, and democratic rights.” Virtually all have led in suppressing, if not murdering, opposition currents in their own nations and everywhere on earth where their troops engage in the ruthless murder of oppressed people.

Reject the Black Agreement! Join hands in the struggle for Minimum Wages!
Progressive Plantation Workers Union(PPWU) expresses its utter disgust at the tripartite agreement on wages in the tea industry signed on 20.2.2015. After over one year of struggle and eight tripartite sittings, it was an anti-climax to find most unions, employers and the State Government once again signing an agreement to provide starvation wages to tea plantation workers.

The decision by the Urgent Matters Court yesterday [31 January] to designate the Ezz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, as a “terrorist organisation” represents another round in the series of attacks by the Egyptian regime against the Palestinian resistance and the people of Gaza.